


i'd be home with you

by buckysshield



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 03:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19737865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckysshield/pseuds/buckysshield
Summary: The year is 2016 and Steve Rogers is standing in an apartment in Bucharest and there are blue eyes looking back at him.“Do you know me?” Steve asks. Remember, he begs him silently. Remember me. Remember us.“You’re Steve.” Will he allow himself hope again? “I read about you in a museum.” Oh.So he doesn’t remember. Steve wonders if it’s even worth the trouble of trying to find his missing piece when he’s gone so long without it.





	i'd be home with you

**Author's Note:**

> In which Steve Rogers tries to find home over the years.

The year is 1930 and Steve Rogers is sitting at the small table in the dining room of his house. He fiddles with his pencil set, wondering idly what he will draw on the fresh sheet of paper in front of him. His mother looks lovingly at him from the kitchen as she bakes the apple pie that Steve loves so much.

“Ma,” he says, absentmindedly.

“Yes, dear?” she replies, in her gentle Irish accent.

“Can Bucky come over to play later?”

“Of course, sweetheart. Can’t eat all the pie ourselves, can we?”

Steve goes back to his pencils and starts drawing his Ma. He is home.

The year is 1936 and Steve Rogers is standing outside his house. He has just come home from his mother’s funeral. Tuberculosis, the doctor said. Nothing they could do. He feels like a rug has been pulled from underneath him and he is falling, falling. Something is missing from him. He is no longer a complete person.

“We looked for you after. My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery.” Bucky’s voice speaks softly from behind him.

“I know, I'm sorry. I just...kind of wanted to be alone.”

“How was it?”

“’S okay.” A lie. “She’s next to Dad.”

“I was gonna ask-“ Bucky starts. Steve cuts him off.

“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck, I just-“

“We can put the couch cushions on the floor, like when we were kids,” Bucky says. Steve doesn’t need this. He needs what he is missing back. If only he knew what it was.

“It’ll be fun! All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash,” Bucky jokes, though his eyes are still pleading. Steve wants to say yes, he does, but the last time he felt whole was in this house and he needs to find that feeling again. Distracted, he looks around for his key. Bucky kicks aside a brick and hands him the key. “Come on.”

“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own,” Steve replies.

“The thing is,” Bucky says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “you don’t have to. ‘Cause I’m with you til the end of the line.”

Steve thinks about how Bucky knew where the key was, even when he didn’t. He thinks about how long he has known, trusted, loved him.

He thinks about how Bucky knows him, really knows him, in the way that only his ma did.

He smiles. The feeling flickers. It’s still in there somewhere. There is hope.

The year is 1938 and Steve Rogers is sitting on the couch of him and Bucky’s apartment. He is leaning over the coffee table, sketching a face. Whose face is it? He doesn’t know. His thoughts wander as his hands scratch the paper with a mind of their own, before being interrupted by Bucky opening the door of their apartment, coming back after a long day at work.

“Hey, Stevie,” he says as he walks in.

“Hi, Buck,” Steve says as he closes his sketchbook and turns around. “I got us pasta for dinner tonight.”

Bucky smiles and looks at him. “What would I do without you, pal?”

“Have this tiny, ratty, definitely-meant-for-one-person apartment all to yourself?” Steve smirks.

Bucky pouts. “Hey, don’t diss the flat. It ain’t much, but it’s home.”

Steve smiles. He’s right. His fingers sketch the shape of a mouth. Bucky’s mouth.

The year is 1945 and Steve Rogers is clinging onto the side of a train. He is watching his best friend and love fall miles down a mountainside as tears run down his face. Bucky’s screams ring in his ears until he is too far away to hear. It’s like losing his Ma again - the piece that makes him whole is falling away with Bucky. And now it will die with him.

And that is what is running through Steve’s head as the plane he is flying gets closer to the icy water. Peggy’s increasingly frantic voice sounds far away as he tightens his grip on the controls. Then there is a crash, then cold, then nothing.

The year is 2011 and Steve Rogers is waking up to a new century. There are people helping him get accustomed but his heart still screams _Bucky Bucky Bucky_ and the piece of him is still gone. He still cannot describe exactly what it is but he is still lost. Still incomplete.

The year is 2014 and Steve Rogers is looking at a face he never thought he would see again.

“Bucky?”

The missing piece stirs. Could it still be alive after all this time? Could Bucky still be alive after all this time?

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

He fires a bullet. Steve ducks. He knows he hasn’t been hit, but it sure as hell feels like he has.

It is only a few weeks later and Steve Rogers is on the floor choking on blood.

“You’re my _mission_!” Bucky screams, hitting him with more force.

“Then finish it,” Steve chokes out. “‘Cause I’m with you til the end of the line.”

He waits for another punch. It never comes. Instead bright blue eyes are looking at him. A new dawn is breaking and Bucky is staring, staring at him as if he is remembering. Hope has returned.

Then the aircraft explodes.

Steve is in cold water again. There is water in his lungs and this time he’s dying for real. There is a hand on his back, pulling, and then he is breathing air, and there are blue eyes looking at him again as everything goes fuzzy and then black.

The year is 2016 and Steve Rogers is standing in an apartment in Bucharest and there are blue eyes looking back at him.

“Do you know me?” Steve asks. Remember, he begs him silently. Remember me. Remember us.

“You’re Steve.” Will he allow himself hope again? “I read about you in a museum.” Oh.

So he doesn’t remember. Steve wonders if it’s even worth the trouble of trying to find his missing piece when he’s gone so long without it.

Steve is trying to talk to him, find out why he pulled him from the river, and Sam is yelling in his ear to get out now and then men are coming through the windows and breaking down the door and Bucky is punching them and his eyes are dead and far from here.

“Buck, stop! You’re going to kill someone!” Steve says in desperation.

Bucky punches through the floor, only centimetres from his face. “I’m not gonna kill anyone.”

So he’s still in there after all, Steve thinks.

And he is sure of that when Bucky smiles through his pain, in the warehouse where they find him.

“Your mom’s name was Sarah. You used to put newspaper in your shoes.”

It’s him. It’s really him. There is a familiar ache in Steve’s heart.

And it’s while the two of them are fighting Tony that Steve thinks sadly, this is what we are used to. The fight. This is what’s familiar. This is what’s closest to being whole.

He feels a pang of familiarity, too, when Bucky tells him he’s going back into cryo.

The year is 2017 and Steve Rogers is in his Brooklyn apartment, smiling at Bucky’s grinning face over Skype.

“You’d love it here, Steve,” Bucky exclaims. “There’s so much fancy tech. I gotta ask T’Challa to let you visit some time, they’re really uptight about security.”

“I’d love that, Buck,” Steve replies. Neither Bucky nor Steve is whole yet, but they’re recovering together. Loss is no longer the only constant between them. Still, Steve knows he will never be the same again. He wants to go back, before the nightmare. Settle down with a nice girl, maybe. He thinks back to Peggy.

“You alright, Stevie?” Bucky asks. Steve looks back to the screen and there are Bucky’s eyes, blue and reassuring as ever.

“Fine. Now, what’d you say about a visit to Wakanda?”

The year is 2018 and Steve Rogers is standing in a forest in Wakanda. Something is wrong.

“Steve?” says Bucky behind him. His voice is small. Steve turns around to see Bucky’s arm turning to dust. He is losing him again. Bucky’s eyes meet his and he is scared, and then his legs are dust too and he falls forward, but he never hits the ground. Steve stumbles forwards and kneels down in a haze. He touches the ground where Bucky was and is met only with dust. Without realising, his missing part had come back, and now it was lost once more.

The year is 2023 and Steve Rogers is standing in a forest again. He is going back in time to return the stones, but not only that. He is going back and he is finding the missing piece for good. He can’t look Bucky in the eyes because then he will get sidetracked and stay. You are looking for your missing part, Steve says to himself. It’s Peggy, not Bucky. He stands on the platform, and hears Banner count down from five. Then suddenly he is in the 40s but it’s wrong, because there’s no Bucky, and Steve is different, too. Still, he decides to seek out Peggy. He finds her, but he can’t bring himself to walk up to her. Because he knows he has made a mistake. Peggy’s love is lost to him, and she will move on, and with a shock he realises he has too. He has no place in her story. Perhaps Peggy has already met her husband, perhaps not. Nevertheless, it is not Steve’s place to interfere. Especially when what he was looking for had been there all along. His story is one of adapting, not undoing. He clicks the signal to be sent back.

Bucky’s shock is clear to him when he steps off the platform. “Steve?” he says. “I thought- you would’ve-“

Steve shook his head. “It’s not home anymore. Home is here now.”

He looks into Bucky’s eyes. He is met with understanding.

“Oh,” says Bucky.

The year is 2025 and Steve Rogers is standing in the living room of his and Bucky’s Brooklyn apartment. His brush dances across the easel as he paints the soft Wakandan sunset that he remembers. He is so focused that he doesn’t hear Bucky come in until he calls softly “Hey, Stevie, I’m home.” Steve doesn’t look up until Bucky walks into the room and drapes his hand across his waist and kisses his cheek. “Nice.”

“Hello to you, too,” Steve answers. “How was your day?”

“Alright,” Bucky says. “Went to lunch with Sam - he told me some shenanigans that had happened since we retired. T’Challa told him to tell me that the goats miss me. Also, last week Sam threw his shield so hard it got stuck in the wall of the Avengers facility. And they just finished rebuilding, too! Happy was mad.”

“Do you ever miss it?” Steve asks.

“The Avengering? I guess, sometimes. I regret not being able to meet any of them - some of them seemed real nice and i never got to know them. But the fighting, well. I’ve already hurt enough people. I don’t think I could kill again, even bad guys.” Bucky’s eyes cloud over.

“I miss them too. But it was time, I think, for me to retire. I’m done with Captain America. I just want to be Steve Rogers.” Steve says quietly.

Bucky grins. “Okay, Steve Rogers, what do you want to order for dinner? I can’t be bothered to cook. I’m thinking Thai.”

“Thai sounds great.”

Bucky flops down on the couch, feeling around for his phone. He fishes it out of his pocket and starts flicking through Thai options. “There’s too many buttons. I’m just a simple old man, I don’t get this,” Bucky says grumpily. Steve smiles, adds the finishing touches to his painting, and then flops down next to Bucky, snuggling into his side. “Just choose the cheapest one.”

Bucky nods and draws him closer, running a hand absentmindedly through Steve’s hair with his free hand. Steve smiles. He is home.


End file.
